“I baptize you in the name of the conservation of energy. What comes around goes around.”

“Now, alone on the roof, Valentine looked at her shoes and wished people would either stay or go away, but not constantly coming back and leaving again.”

“She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.”

“The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?”

“Yvette had never talked about her marriage - she was a smart girl, and she knew you had no right to complain about someone you got all the way to the altar with. You made that choice, even if you were a child when you did it, and the marriage vow was sacred.”

“At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.”

“Children were experiments, and his had failed.”